Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2008

Floor Speech

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008

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Ms. PELOSI. Madam Chairman, today this new Congress will put America's fiscal house in order. It will do so by presenting and voting on the Democratic budget as designed by Mr. Spratt, the chairman of the Budget Committee, and the House Democrats. I wish that it were coming to the floor with bipartisan support in the Congress. I know it has bipartisan support in the country.

I commend Mr. Spratt for his exceptional leadership in bringing to the floor a budget for the future, a budget that will initiate an era of accountability in government spending and in government accountability on our priorities. It is a budget that will come to balance in both the spending and also in terms of its priorities.

This putting our house in order is necessary because for the last 6 years the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress have increased spending while giving tax cuts to the wealthiest few in our country, leaving our country awash in red ink, mortgaging our children's future. It is just not right.

When President Bush took office, he inherited a budget situation because of the PAYGO principles adopted by the Clinton administration with the Democrats in the Congress. Because of those principles, the last four Clinton budgets were budgets in surplus. Because of those PAYGO principles, coming out of the Clinton years, we were on a trajectory of $5.6 trillion in surplus, $5.6 trillion in surplus on our way to ridding ourselves of the national debt.

Because of the irresponsible budgeting of the Republicans in Congress and in the White House, we are now on a trajectory of $3 trillion in deficit, a swing of approximately $9 trillion. This is historic, and, again, it is wrong. It is wrong for our children. It mortgages their future. It is wrong for our economy.

The fiscal unaccountability will be corrected today with the passage of this budget, and I commend Chairman

Spratt and the Democrats on the committee for taking us to this place. Just imagine, we were on our way to ridding ourselves of the national debt. We are now on our way to increasing it.

The budget put forth by the chairman is one that honors our responsibilities to the American people. A budget should be a statement of our national values. Our Federal budget should reflect what is important to us as a Nation. That is how we should allocate our resources. We should do it in an ethical way and a fiscally sound way and the most honest and open way. And we must do it always with an eye to the future, and that is what this budget does.

It honors our responsibility first and foremost to protect the American people, and that is why it has the endorsement of almost every veterans group, and they are actively supporting this legislation and advocating a ``yes'' vote.

It honors our commitment to grow our economy, to create good paying jobs for the future by investing in innovation, and that is why it has the support of the Council of Competitiveness and almost any entity that is geared to the future, to innovation and to make keeping America number one.

It honors our commitment to our children, how they are cared for, with their health care, with their education and the economic strengths of their families. That is why it has the support of so many organizations, religious organizations, who see a budget as a moral document.

It honors our commitment to preserve our planet for the future, and that is why it has the support right to left, Democratic and Republican, nonpartisan, nonconflict, any entity that you can name involved in preserving our planet, in energy independence and respecting God's creation, which nature is, honoring our commitment to nature and to the future, preserving the planet. This budget does that.

Again, it does it all in a fiscally sound way. No new deficit spending; pay-as-you-go.

Think about what was inherited by this Congress. Think about what was inherited by this Congress 6 years ago and the President, $5.6 trillion in surplus, now we are $3 trillion in a trajectory of deficit. It is just not right. We can reverse it today.

Again, the support outside this Congress indicates that the American people are so far ahead of the Congress of the United States when they think about our values and how our budget should reflect those values, about accountability and how responsible we should be for the taxpayers' dollars and about the future.

So I urge my colleagues to support the Spratt House Democratic budget. To vote ``aye'' on that is a vote for the future. It is a vote for a new era of accountability. It is a vote for a moral statement, a statement of our national values. I thank Mr. Spratt for his leadership.

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